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Topic: Dessert (Read 2924 times)

Not sure if this belongs here or the hostess section or family? Mods please move if its not located in the right spot :/

I had my mother and her boyfriend over last Friday and something was bugging me but not sure etiquette wise it was fine?

I hosted them and provided supper ie meat loaf, corn, some fruit. My mom in surprise brought over store bought cookies as "Dessert" after a bit of a power struggle in my own home about my daughter eating cookies I let her have one after dinner and then had one..so it was a store bought package. When mom was going she went to my tupperware container area grabbed one off the shelf and said here " I will leave one each for you" and put the rest in the tupperware to bring home... I was a bit puzzled. Thought it was a bit rude but I didn't mention anything to mom. Whenever we go over there we leave the left overs and just take our containers home.

I don't see anything wrong with her taking her cookies back. You don't want your DD to have them (I am the same way, prefer healthy over junk), and you don't eat them. I don't think she was rude as she did leave a few just in case and she knew you didn't want DD to have them.

Agree with the others that she probably just thought she was being helpful just leaving the cookies. but it would have been polite for her to ask you if she should take the cookies. She definitely should have asked before taking the tupperware.

Not sure if this belongs here or the hostess section or family? Mods please move if its not located in the right spot :/

I had my mother and her boyfriend over last Friday and something was bugging me but not sure etiquette wise it was fine?

I hosted them and provided supper ie meat loaf, corn, some fruit. My mom in surprise brought over store bought cookies as "Dessert" after a bit of a power struggle in my own home about my daughter eating cookies I let her have one after dinner and then had one..so it was a store bought package. When mom was going she went to my tupperware container area grabbed one off the shelf and said here " I will leave one each for you" and put the rest in the tupperware to bring home... I was a bit puzzled. Thought it was a bit rude but I didn't mention anything to mom. Whenever we go over there we leave the left overs and just take our containers home.

I can't get past your mother trying to over-ride your parenting decision. Does she do this often?

Yes, she tends to be rude, and tramples boundaries. I suspect that she took your container through a bit of pique. She may have felt that she "lost" the discussion over the cookies.

I'm not sure why she brought the cookies in the first place. If they were something special I'd think that she was trying to be nice. If they were run-of-the mill-off-the-shelf stuff I'd think that she might be trying to annoy you - I surmise from your post that you have been trying to restrict your child's intake of simple sugars.

At this point, I think that you have won this battle with your child's appetite. When my kids were little I was able to restrict the junk sugars until they were about 2. In later childhood they did like the snacky stuff. Now that they are adults they don't care much for junk foods or desserts at all, and eat very healthily.

I sounds like you are getting better and better at dealing with her. Be sure that you get your container back.

I think your mother took them because it was clear you did not want them in your home. However, I think leaving one for each of you was a very passive aggressive way of saying, "I still don't respect your boundaries. I'm just letting you think you won."

The other thing that bothered me was that she took the tupperware and left the packaging. She just had to leave 2 cookies, but why didn't she put those in your tupperware and leave them at your house? Surely she could have managed a package of opened cookies until she got home. Then she wouldn't have to worry about returning your tupperware to you. I think she's playing a control game with you for you standing up to her about snacks for your daughter.

If, as Doodlmar indicates, there is some background here it would be good to include it in the OP. Just going from this thread I think she did the right thing by taking the cookies with her and I would have done the same. You obviously didn't want them in the house so she might as well take them home so they aren't wasted.

She should not have been bringing items to be served at a meal in someone ELSE's house.

She was wrong to argue with you about whether your child could have a cookie.

(As an aside: I finally stopped having arguments that I knew I was going to lose, especially in front of my kid. Because arguing w/ Grandma and then caving simply taught my child that my authority was weak. So I'd cave without argument, or I'd leap immediately to a compromise posiiton and stick there--but if I argued, I got really heavy-duty and I won, by god!)

And I think she was wrong not to leave the rest of the cookies with you. Especially to leave only two? That's bad form. The only acceptable thing for those cookies to have been was a hostess gift/gift for the household.

Hindsight's 20/20, of course, especially when one is not the person involved in the situations, but what I *wish* you'd done is say, "No, that's all right, I didn't want you to bring those in the first place, so you take them ALL home," and take the container out of her hands, dump all the cookies back in the package, and hand it to her.

Oh, well.

But I agree that you have a couple of reasons to believe your mom was out of line.